Chapter 11

With increase in volume, day to day operations became a challenge. Ramesh and his team were primarily concentrating on development of features. With more clients from all round the country, support calls were increasing. Bhishma knew that unless the users had a great experience and got their doubts clarified on a timely basis, they would lose interest.

The central computer system was also running out of capacity. With this capacity constraint more and more clients were facing problems. He asked Arjun to help 

Ramesh to make sure that the capacity is planned and upgraded to match the growth in volume. Arjun took this up seriously. He undertook a detailed evaluation of the operations. He realised that the system team as well as MSS team considered development of features their priority. Solving client problems was considered a low end job and a necessary evil.

Arjun went about addressing this problem heads on. He organised a special task team consisting of smartest kids from business, systems and MSS to address issues for service quality and redressal of grievances. To begin with there was significant resistance in being posted to this low-end job. It was considered to be punishment posting by most.

Arjun realized that the biggest challenge was changing this attitudinal issue. He decided to make sure that posting into this task team becomes a privilege posting and not a punishment posting.

He called the complete team for a brainstorming session.

“Guys, I called you all because I want your help in changing our task team performance. This task team is expected to help our clients to sort out their problems. But, today the feedback we get from our clients is that we are failing in our duties. So I decided to ask you all why we are in this stage”

“Sir I want to make a point. We are from the system team. But we are demeaned by being posted in this help desk. I don’t feel that I am part of a system team that is involved in developing an advanced solution. I feel that I am in one of the call centers.”Ranjit replied

“ I agree with Ranjit” added Rajat also of systems team. “ When the telephone rings I can almost  listen to myself saying Mam can I help you”

“OK Rajat is it shameful to help our clients? Are we not being sustained by the fee that is paid by our clients? If the clients don’t feel happy and they don’t buy our services there will be no solution development for any of us”

“I don’t say that we should not help our clients. But that is the job  of people who are selected to do that job. We can simply outsource this to a call center where ‘not so well educated’ chaps will sit and take these calls and sort out the clients stupid clarifications” Ranjit replied.

“May be the business operations team can handle it” Rajat remarked

“Do you think it is the job of BO to clean up the shit that the systems team has created” Gopan from BO who was posted to task team was fuming.

“Please stop this nonsense” Arjun raised his voice mildly. “You guys are arguing without truly understanding our role and the challenges we face”

“Listen to some facts. Do you know why I have been asked by Bhishma to take a look the task team performance? It is because we have reached a situation that there is severe backlash from our client base about the quality of our solution. The murmur that was here and there, is now become a uprising asking us to take our solution back and return their monies”

“In the last one week I analysed whatever documentation you had created relating to the customer grievances. I took help of Krishnan the MSS project head to study the root cause. 90% of the complaints are not some clarification from users on which button to press or how to start the computer or requesting help on command. They are performance issues of programs getting slow, the weekly upgrades failing to load, programs crashing, failure of some functionalities and so on.” Arjun pointed out

“These are on account of poor design, poor programming and insufficient testing. These cannot be solved by call center staff. They need help from qualified people to solve these problems. We need bright kids like you to analyse these problems deeply to understand the root causes and solve them. Then we send these upgrades to our clients so that these problems don’t continue. I don’t even know why we call these upgrades. They are nothing but bug fixes”

“Let me make a point my friends” Krishnan butted in. These problems are because all you smart guys who are involved in development and testing are focused on features and functionalities and not of performance. We only see if the functionality work. We test using few records. We don’t appreciate how our programs scale, we don’t worry about memory leaks, we don’t spent time on the algorithms. We don’t even worry about basic discipline in coding. I have seen mixing up data definitions as integer and decimal in the same program. I have seen logics in queries and searches in program that will always throw out null records because the logics are plain faulty.”

“What is required from this task team is Performance Enhancement. But we see the role of this group as help desk. Therefore we don’t respect the role that we are expected to play. Therefore we don’t play this role with our hearts in it. Therefore we don’t do justice to our role. Therefore our clients are happy and therefore we are failing as a company. It is a vicious cycle.” Arjun was almost talking to himself.

“We are going to change what we call ourselves. This group will from now on be called ‘Performance Enhancement Group’ ; PEG We are the pegs on which the growth of our company will be supported, we are the peg that we use in our climb upward”

“If we fail in this role, we will not be PEGS but PIGS that will drive our company to its doom” Arjun was getting the drift in his mind, the road ahead was getting clear.

“But sir, why should I be there in this group?” Vamsi from MSS asked. I am working on one component of the solution. ie; communication

“OK. I agree. Are you a person who understand only programming related to the communication system. In the next project you will go from MSS, will it only be in comms”

“No sir”

“That is the point. Do you think that the BO team who don’t understand any programming are better suited? Do you think that the systems team who no involved in programming are better suited? We don’t expect you to fix all bugs of all modules by PEGS. We expect smart and brilliant people like you, who have exposure to different modules will analyse the problem, solve it if you can or connect to the relevant experts from the team and help it to be solved.”

Arjun was speaking with utmost seriousness and earnestness. He was looking into the eyes of each of them. He wanted them to appreciate the import of what he was explaining. He knew it was important for them to feel and believe the importance of what they were doing and also absorb how it is going to help them in their growth. He continued

“This is a different skill than jut programming. This is a skill that requires ability to react under stress. Ability to make quick evaluation of various options under demanding circumstances and to take a call on immediate work around and on long term solution. It does not give you luxury of time that you often have when you are solving a problem as a part of your regular development. This is a different kind of training that you will get; preparing you to be a leader who can lead his troops.”

He paused for a minute and looked up as if trying to pull out an idea from the sky. His hands reached to the back of his head as if he was trying to comb his hair with his fingers.  This was a characteristic mannerism of Arjun when he is thinking seriously.

  “I want you to transform from being Karna to being Arjun” He said with a smile

“Do you know what this means?”

“No sir.” Some of them murmured

“If you remember the story from Mahabharatha, Karna was a better archer than Arjun. But he had one curse. Do you know what it was?” He stopped for an answer from the audience.

“He would forget all what he learned when it is really a matter of life and death” Gopan said

“That is true. What it meant that he was quite weak in managing stress. I’m sure many of you would have experienced this in your life too. In the examination hall, sometimes some of us forget all what we learned. For some others, it could be at the time of an interview. Even in games, a critical point some may feel frozen. All these are signs of our inability to cope with sudden stress.”

“It is not enough for us to learn skills and build knowledge. It is also important for us to be use them effectively and smartly at time of crisis. One of the most important training that PEGS will give us is this.”

“As we have a critical role to deliver; we only want as members of this team, those who possess functional skills and crisis management skills. Please keep this in mind. With this in mind together  will make PEGS the critical component of success of IES. 

Thanks guys for joining me today. Let us get going.”

All of them dispersed. Krishna and Arjun walked out to the balcony to share a smoke. Udhi also joined them.

While lighting  a cigarette Arjun said. “ I want to posting to PEGS a matter of privilege and not a matter of punishment. I want them to feel like Heroes”

Krishnan nodded his head as he took a deep drag of his cigarette.